"If Carlsburg made Football Games..."
At least it is gameplay wise. The way the players move is great, so much more realistic than the games of old, and the amount of skills you can do is unbelieveable.
The only thing, which i will say now, that holds this game back is the tournament that it's based on. Even though it has some great tournament exclusive modes, such as "Captain your Country" (more on that later) it does limit the game to countries with no club teams making an appearance.
Back onto the positives, however, and the games graphics. The best graphics i have seen on a football game. Err, not much else to say about that, it is just so much smoother than Fifa 08, and you can tell this. The game seems to have had more of a sheen put upon it.
Moving back onto gameplay, skilling round people and defenders is much more trialling now thanks to the way the players move as much as the actual skills. Mastering some of the more advanced moves is suprisingly simple, but they are all to easy to get wrong in the heat of the moment, which is fair bearing in mind the advantage they insue. Defenders can only do the very basic skills, midfielders can do more and wingers and strikers can do the entire skill list, although a player like some Armernian striker (what? i dont know their names?!?!) cant do the skills to the same level as, Cristiano Ronaldo, say. rolling the ball up your heel, smootly flicking it over your head and volleying it past the bumbleing keeper has never been so fun!
There are plently of modes to play, the most basic being one off's against friends, moving up into the standard tournament mode, of which there is obviously one. The best one in my opinion, however, is Captain your Country, a mode where you play as just one member of any country, and try to play better than all of the AI players so as to become Captain. This is basically the Be a Pro mode re-vamped, but i really like it.
The online modes are simple, ranked and un-ranked matches, but extremely fun, made all the more so by the fully customizeable celebrations. Twiddleing the analogue sticks and shoulder buttons can doo anything from pointing to the crowd right the way though to Nani's doubles back twist flip turn thing. Very impressive stuff, and great to piss off your opponenet with :P
Overall a really great game, and seeing as it is made by EA Sports, its one fault will soon be eradicated.
I mean, of course, Fifa 09.